Drawn to Nature courses and workshops explore local landscapes and provide opportunities for creative responses.
The 2017 Waveney & Blyth Arts Celebrate! programme finished with our October AGM. Look out for the 2018 programme in the spring.
Previous 2017 Workshops
What a great day on the Blyth Estuary with Ivor Murrell and twelve writers. We explored the walk along the south side of the Blyth hearing the marsh chorus of redshank, whimbrel and oystercatcher, watching the tide slipping off the mud banks and returning through pine woods. After lunch we saw the roof angels in Blythburgh church.
Excellent writing followed – haiku, tanka and short prose.
The four-mile walk followed waterside paths and boardwalks along the glorious Blyth Estuary, past Angel Marsh and Dead Man’s Covert. We heard poems about the area en route and concentrated on using the senses — smell and taste as well as sight and hearing. In the afternoon we gathered in the village hall to write our own poetry or prose.
New Words from the Woods Workshop
I am delighted to be working with Brandon Country Park to run a new writing workshop suitable for beginners and experienced writers. Held on 9 May, when the wind at last dropped a little in strength, if not increasing in warmth, we explored the trees, glades and special trees within the park. Ample helpings of tea and cake from the Copper Beech Tearoom helped us create some great prose and poetry. I hope to run another course here in the autumn.
Some workshops from 2016:
I led a Travellers’ Tales writing workshop in Brandon on 25 July 2016. The workshop, in partnership with Suffolk Poetry Society, inspired poems which were read during the Ferry Tales celebratory day in Brandon on 18th September. Contact me for more details and look out for information about the 2017 programme in Brandon.
The 2016 Celebrate programme for Waveney & Blyth Arts closed on 12th November with a day of talks looking at recent achievements. I gave a short presentation on the Walks programme and introduced readings from Suffolk Poetry Society members of poems inspired by the Sculpture Trail.
The day also featured inspirational sculptor, Laurence Edwards, and composer Jackie Walduck, who is Artistic Director of Tactile, a sextet of Visually Impaired musicians who will be taking part in Waveney & Blyth Arts 2017 project, Sensing Nature.
Examples of walks in previous years include a poetry walk at Redgrave Fen, a Suffolk Wildlife Trust reserve. Here we read, on location, poetry about fens and rivers and collected notes to create our own poems .
Another walk took place on a farm near Halesworth where we explored the role of hemp and flax in the landscape, in history and in art. The walk included a blindfold woodland experience, led by artists Liz McGowan and Jane Frost, and ended with time to create our own environmental art using found objects from the wood and the farm.
To register your interest or find out more about the Drawn to Nature Workshops please use the form below.